Science now has data on something that cat owners knew all along -especially if you make an effort to use your cat's name a lot. A team led by Dr. Atsuko Saito of Sophia University in Japan studied cats' reactions to a string of words that included their names, all spoken in the same intonation. Cats do recognize their names, even when spoken by someone they don't know. It was also made apparent that this information is more important to humans than to cats.